The Human Flow of Tokyo

I get anxious in crowded spaces.  Especially tight, enclosed spaces, like a Metro bus during Seattle’s morning rush hour, crammed front to back by a solid corporeal mass.  When you’re boarding the bus at one of the earlier stops, like I am, you have the good fortune of finding an aisle seat to enjoy a few brief minutes of watching the city pass by.  But with each successive stop, more and more commuters pour in, like wet cement into a trough, and sometimes you must rely on Google Maps to determine how close you are to your destination, all your familiar visual cues blocked by North Face jackets and Osprey backpacks which swing dangerously close to your eye.  

So when my wife and I decided to visit Japan, my mind returned over and over to the notorious Japanese subway - of salarymen desperately shoving each other through swiftly closing doors, the inside of the car like a wild and frothing sea of white shirts dotted by a myriad of dark heads bobbing in its waves.  To the infamous Shibuya Pedestrian Crossing, each green light letting loose a massive stampede more dangerous than a herd of buffalo before the Transcontinental Railroad’s final spike was driven into the ground.  To elevators, sidewalks, and pocket-sized bars filled with more carbon than oxygen.

And yet the initial idea to go was all mine. 

I’ve been fascinated by Japan for years. To me, it is exotic without being third-world; sleekly modern while being steeped in traditions centuries-old; its art, philosophy and literature richly layered and diverse.  The Land of the Rising Sun’s history stretches well beyond the visible horizon, its shining path full of emperors and shogun, buddhist monks, samurai and geisha.  Shinto shrines lie beside Buddhist temples in the shadows of stratospheric skyscrapers which reflect sunlight down into lush city parks teeming with the summer sounds of birds and cicadas.  It is tangible, mystical.  Magical.

After an 11-hour Singapore Airlines flight from LAX to Narita, we exited the jetway into an airport that seemed no more or less crowded than any we had experienced before.  In fact, the only obvious differences were the kanji signage and the predominantly Asian ethnicities surrounding us.  I smiled - this was familiar territory.  Moving through the airport with relative ease, we procured our pocket wi-fi and Japan Rail Passes before boarding the Narita Express to Tokyo.  The train was only half full, quiet and rocking gently as we passed by open fields and occasional groves of trees, the tile peaks of countryside homes soon replaced by the flat-roofed clusters of the suburbs.  Then came the pavement, the brick, the glass, packed tighter and tighter, climbing higher and higher into the sky. 

We had arrived at Shinjuku Station.

Six different train companies using twelve different train lines.  Ten platforms serving 20 tracks.  Another 17 platforms accessed by hallways to adjoining buildings. Both an underground and aboveground shopping arcade, and three department stores.  200 exits and ticket gates in total.  

Averaging 3.5 million passengers per day, Shinjuku Station is the busiest in the world.

We found the nearest wall and pressed our backs against it.  We gasped, we gaped, overwhelmed by the fast-flowing stream of passengers in which I thought we’d surely drown.  Standing there for 15 minutes, we scanned for any visible signage that would steer us in the right direction towards a way out.  

And then we saw it - an Info booth, our life boat, manned by a uniformed woman who was so friendly and helpful, I wanted to put her in my pocket for the duration of our trip.  She told us where we needed to go, but getting there required a brave leap into the churning waters.  My wife and I looked at each other, nodded, and stepped forward.

We didn’t drown.  Nor did we get caught in a riptide pulling us into the unnavigable bustle of the station’s Central Passage.  No one bumped into us and we didn’t bump into anyone but each other.  In fact, despite the seeming chaos, what we found was a beautifully coordinated choreography which held social awareness at its core.

Japan is deemed a ‘collectivist’ society, whereas the US and most Western countries are more ‘individualist’.  According to the Six Dimensions of National Culture, developed by Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist, which apply a 1-100 scoring range to various countries per each dimension, Japan rates 46 on the Individual vs Collectivism scale vs 91 for the US, a difference supported by many IND-COL studies.

In simple terms, a collectivist society is defined as one which places the good of the group over that of the individual.  There is a preference for harmony and consensus over individual opinion and determination.  While Japan’s collectivism is considered mild compared to that of other East Asian countries (after all, they coined the word ‘karoshi’, which means ‘overwork death’), it permeates Japanese culture and etiquette, influencing behaviors exhibited everywhere, from the private onsen at a ryokan-style hostel to the Yamanote Loop Line, sections of which run 200% over capacity during rush hour. 

Although it took a couple of days to reach even a slight comfort level with the train system, this was due to the complexity of the stations themselves, not the hordes of people moving about us.  On each platform, passengers line up in a first-come, first-serve, orderly fashion.  Once on the train or subway car, those who stand face those who are seated so there’s no risk of losing an eye to a wayward backpack.  There is no food or open drink on the train.  Speaking on cell phones is prohibited, and talking - rare overall - is kept to the level of a library whisper.  Even during peak hours, if you close your eyes, you might be fooled into thinking you have the entire car to yourself.

I had no anxiety in Tokyo. Not like I do in the States.  Even at the infamous Shibuya Pedestrian Crossing, I felt an almost natural affinity towards the human flow of the city.  And I wondered - with all outward appearances being equal - why?

The answer didn’t come until we returned home.  Arriving at N gates, we headed towards the escalators for the underground tram to SeaTac’s main terminal.  What we experienced were flailing arms and carry-on luggage careening on one wheel in the mad dash to reach the tram first.  There were no well-ordered lines.  Latecomers pushed their way forward, men before women, the largest man before the smallest.  And there was no heed paid to the elderly couple looking lost and befuddled at the outer edge of the crowd.

I felt my chest tighten, my breathing speed up, as I, too, became suddenly hell bent on squeezing into that tram.  It was like a switch was flipped - instead of going with the flow of my fellow man, I was instinctually seeking ways to survive in spite of him.  When we got on the tram, my wife turned to me and said, “I already miss Japan.”

We were back in America again indeed.  Land of the rugged individual.  Grab your’s before your neighbor gets his.  Civility be damned.

While values are at the core of each culture, philosophy is the central crux of values.  While the United States was formed under the philosophical guidance of Western thinkers such as John Locke and Montesquieu with their emphasis on freedom and independence, Japan was heavily influenced by Eastern philosophies like Taoism, which places importance on concepts such as unity and humility.  In the United States, the individual reigns supreme.  In Japan, the interconnections within society are key.    

 When you’re traversing a busy Harajuku street, or the packed aisles of the Tokyu Food Show, or the tight alleyways of the Golden Gai on a Friday night, there’s a social rhythm - an unspoken coordination - between you and those around you.  Like jazz musicians jamming for the first time, feeling their way, chord to chord, their concerted efforts reaching improvisational brilliance due to musical mutuality.  Without it, you have a mishmash of noise as each player strives for volume, to be front and center on stage.

Richard Nisbett, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan conducted a study on eye-tracking.  He found interesting differences between Eastern and Western participants.  When presented with a photograph, those from East Asia spent more time looking at the picture’s background, whereas those from the US and Canada honed in on the main item of focus.  Combining these sensory manifestations with each culture’s deep inner values, I looked back on our experience at SeaTac vs those at Shinjuku Station:  in Seattle, while awaiting the tram, what passengers had was a tunnel-vision aimed at the doors they needed to pass through to get themselves on board the train.  Everything else was a blur.  The Shinjuku commuters, in contrast, had a keen holistic vision of the whole scene around them.

I was born and raised in New England by parents who instilled a deep sense of personal independence - social, financial and intellectual.  And I’ve embodied these values throughout my life.  By most measures, I am unabashedly American.  But there are psychological aspects to me that run counter to the pure American spirit:  I don’t like being the center of attention, much preferring to be in the limelight than the spotlight;  I enjoy striving for goals as part of a team rather than as an individual, finding greater satisfaction in shared joy; and ‘keeping up with the Jones’ is a fate I’ve long avoided, as I’ve only been truly competitive with the person I was yesterday. 

We are all products of our cultural environment.  But that doesn’t override the innate traits - those in our DNA, our chemistry, our wiring - that make us unique.  On a macro level, we in the US may be deemed bold and rugged individualists, and the Japanese as quiet and humble collectivists, but at the micro level the spectrum is broad, populated by millions of tick marks crammed so close together that the differences between them are sometimes hard to detect.    

Sometimes we don’t even see them within ourselves.  

Back in Seattle, after our Japan vacation, I boarded the Metro bus to work.  With each stop, more and more bodies squeezed into the seats, the aisles.  My anxiety began to rise.  Instead of focusing solely on my destination, I decided to broaden my view by looking squarely at the people around me, the expressions on their faces, what they were wearing, the color of their socks, if I could see them.  And suddenly my anxiety began to decrease.  By acknowledging those around me, I felt a kinship, as if we were all in this crazily crowded bus ride together, and in this secret spirit of camaraderie, I found a private joy.  And I knew everything would be okay.